Extreme Networks announced the general availability of Extreme Networks’ Defender for IoT which helps organisations secure unsecured IoT devices.

Defender for IoT can be deployed on any network and designed to allow non-technical staff at schools, hospitals, retailers and hospitality venues can use it to isolate and protect both wired and wireless IoT devices from cyber attacks.

IoT devices present two major security flaws for businesses today. Most lack embedded security—they were built to run on private networks where the assumption was it was tightly controlled, and device-level security wasn’t required. Manufacturers never considered that the private enterprise network could be connected to the public internet, and therefore the devices may run out-of-date operating systems, have hardcoded passwords and/or lack anti-virus and firewall capabilities. And they are typically deployed in a flat or unsegmented network so that if breached, the attacker can gain access to sensitive areas of the network.

David Raftery, Chief Revenue Officer, Integration Partners said that customers across the industry were having difficulty with IoT security and one of the most challenging aspects is the creation of security policies for a diverse range of devices.

“This can be time-consuming and fraught with error. Extreme’s Defender for IoT solution automates this task with its ability to learn a device’s typical behaviour and then build a security policy that restricts its communication to only what is authorised. With the ability to then segment IoT devices into secure tunnels, Extreme provides our customers multi-layered IoT security over whatever network they have deployed today. It’s a unique and a compelling solution”, he said.

Mike Leibovitz, Senior Director of Product Management and Strategy, Extreme Networks said that businesses are extracting so much value from the IoT revolution that it’s easy to see why deployments are happening fast, and security should not be viewed as an impediment to that.

The big idea is to tackle endpoint attacks which are up up 20 percent on last year, costing businesses millions, Proper endpoint patching is seen as the first line of defence for businesses worldwide. Datto RMM 6.5 will help MSPs better address the security needs of their customers’ IT environments, the company claims.

A part of Datto Business Management, Datto RMM is a cloud remote monitoring and management solution for MSPs. It allows MSPs to manage the IT infrastructure of small and medium businesses remotely with automation tools such as network monitoring, patch management, and remote control.

BlackBerry announced it is scaling its BlackBerry Secure technology and licensing strategy to enable its partners to rapidly bring-to-market safe and secure IoT devices.

According to a recent survey commissioned by the company, approximately 80 per cent of consumers in the US, UK and Canada do not trust their current Internet-connected devices to secure their data and privacy. Additionally, when asked about future purchases, respondents said they were more likely to choose a product or do business with a company that had a strong reputation for data security and privacy.

Avi Networks today announced Universal Service Mesh, adding what it claims are two major enhancements to the Avi Vantage Platform as part of a cunning plan to corner a $12 billion market for application services.

Avi is gets enhanced, full-featured, ingress and gateway services to Istio to facilitate secure connectivity for Kubernetes applications across multiple clusters, regions, or clouds. These include L4-L7 traffic management, security including WAF, and observability.

Cloud Data Management outfit Rubrik has announced support for the new Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering storage class.

The move should mean that Rubrik can cut storage costs of archived data that is infrequently accessed. The new integration provides customers with an additional option to further optimise their cloud archive storage costs.

Microsoft today announced a plethora of new Internet of Things-focused updates to its Azure cloud computing platform.

Some of today’s announcements are relatively minor. Azure IoT Central, the company’s solution for helping you get started with IoT, is now generally available and there are updates to Microsoft’s IoT provisioning service, IoT hub message routing tools and Map Control API.

Microsoft said that the Azure IoT platform will now support Google’s Android and Android Things platform via its Java SDK.

What’s more interesting, though, is the new services. The highlight here is probably the launch of Azure Digital Twins. Using this new service, enterprises can now build their own digital models of any physical environment.

It is the virtual counterpart to a real-world IoT deployment and the idea is that as IoT deployment in the real world changes, so does the digital model. It will provide developers with a full view of all the devices they have deployed and allows them to run advanced analytics and test scenarios as needed without having to make changes to the actual physical deployment.

Writing in its bog, Vole said: “As the world enters the next wave of innovation in IoT where the connected objects such as buildings, equipment or factory floors need to be understood in the context of their environments, Azure Digital Twins provides a complete picture of the relationships and processes that connect people, places and devices.”

Insecurity outfit WatchGuard has rolled out a multi-factor authentication product specifically for SMEs after it spotted a gap in the market.

The security player has introduced AuthPoint and has shared findings from CITE Research that indicated that 61 per cent of SMEs felt that the technology was only reserved for larger enterprises.

Alex Cagnoni, director of Authentication at WatchGuard said that a massive portion of data breaches involve lost credentials and since cyber criminals target organisations of any size, MFA is now a prerequisite for all businesses.

“In the absence of MFA, cyber criminals can usea variety of techniques to acquire usernames and passwords, such as spear phishing, social engineering and buying stolen credentials on the dark web, to gain network access and then steal valuable company and customer data”, he added.

Rebecca Fernyhough, account manager at UK channel partner Epic Network Support said that with the launch of AuthPoint, WatchGuard hadextended its product portfolio with a vital security offering that is often overlooked by SMBs and has done so in a way that is easy for the channel to sell, deploy and manage.

The WatchGuard release comes at a time when SMEs are struggling with keeping on top of security threats.

SaaS flexitime and workforce management outfit HFX has signed a partnership agreement with CIPHR.

The partnership includes integration that brings together HFX’s cloud-based workforce and time management solutions with CIPHR’s range of HR, Recruitment and Learning solutions.

Rob Oehlers, head of customer experience at CIPHR said: “HFX’s cloud-based products are a significant extension to our own HR SaaS solutions. HFX’s innovative approach to managing staff working time means their products are flexible, based on real world experience and extremely useable.”

Nicola Smart Chief Operating Officer at HFX said: “CIPHR’s mid-market focus is an important segment for our products and services. We find that the flexibility that we can provide with our cloud-based model works really well in this market where agile companies are keen to maximise use of specialist technology. We are delighted to be working with CIPHR.”

ADVA is playing a key enabling role in the UK’s first quantum network. Built by the University of Cambridge and officially launched this week, the network is based on a metro transport system in the city of Cambridge.

And here comes the hyperbole. The openness of the ADVA FSP 3000 platform, which can accept keys from third-party systems utilizing standard protocols, is a vital component of the ultra-secure ROADM-based network. For several years, ADVA has worked closely with Toshiba and the Quantum Communications Hub to engineer the groundbreaking data protection system. Quantum cryptography is expected to be an essential tool for securing mission-critical infrastructure as it protects against all forms of cyberattack, including future advances in quantum computing.

Tim Spiller, York University and director of the Quantum Communications Hub said: “As part of the UK National Quantum Technologies Programme in the Quantum Communications Hub, we’re bringing together a wide range of universities, public sector bodies and private companies in a unique collaboration. Our shared goal is realizing the potential of QKD technologies to deliver secure communications. Now, alongside key partners such as ADVA, we’ve reached the stage where QKD-based security is ready for live traffic.”

Here’s some more hyperbole. The ADVA FSP 3000’s open interface was developed to comply with early drafts of the new ETSI quantum-safe cryptography standard currently being developed by an ISG headed by Toshiba. This lets the platform to interoperate with external systems and is crucial to the viability of the new QKD solution as it allows the ADVA FSP 3000 to securely and robustly accept keys. What’s more, ADVA’s WDM platform is able to utilize the same fiber for sending high-speed encrypted data as well as for distributing (or generating) quantum keys. QKD is widely predicted to be fundamental to the future of transport network security, especially for finance and government network applications. Distributing encryption keys by transmitting quantum states guarantees the secrecy of data as any attempt to intercept traffic disturbs photons, introducing coding errors and alerting network operators. This makes QKD the ultimate defence against man-in-the-middle attacks.

Jörg-Peter Elbers, SVP, advanced technology, ADVA said that the launch was a genuine milestone for data protection.

“By working with Toshiba and the Quantum Communications Hub to advance QKD, we’re ushering in a new age of robust security. This technology will provide peace of mind to businesses most at risk from cyberattacks both now and in the future. They and their customers can have confidence that their data will be shielded from all threats including data harvesting for future quantum hacking.

Andrew Shields, assistant managing director of Toshiba Research Europe Limited, Cambridge Research Lab said: “Developing quantum cryptography in fiber optic networks has long been a focus for our team. Over the years, we’ve taken it from PoCs in the lab to real-world demonstrations and we were the first company to achieve a transfer rate of more than 1Mbit/s for quantum communication. Now, through close collaboration with ADVA and the Quantum Communications Hub, we’ve created a fully operational transport network secured by QKD and ready to carry live data..
“At a time of increasingly frequent and severe cyberattacks, this technology will prove vital to enterprises looking to fortify their data security, particularly those in the financial sector. Not only does it offer a new level of protection against intrusion on fibre optic networks, but it also safeguards against the upcoming threat of hacking in a post-quantum world.”

Ian White, van Eck Professor of Engineering, University of Cambridge added: “The development of the UK Quantum Network has already led to a much greater understanding of the potential of this technology in secure applications in a range of fields, in addition to bringing new insights into the operation of the systems in practice,” commented “I have no doubt that the network will bring much benefit in the future to researchers, developers and users.”

Encoded has released its new customer engagement platform that enables contact centres to accept secure customer payments via SMS.

The new platform works with other Encoded payment services enabling a customer’s stored payment details to be accessed from any of the channels being used such as self-service IVR, agent assisted payments or online.

Encoded’s platform has been designed to be PCI DSS and GDPR compliant, ensuring mobile and online security of customer payment data. It also incorporates Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, simulating real agents to handle routine parts of the conversation. “Bots” autonomously engage in client conversations alerting agents only when the conversation falls out of the expected flow, allowing them to pick up with the full conversation history. This enables a small number of contact centre staff to handle a large number of customers.

Businesses can also use SMS chat via Encoded’s platform to promote the use of online services, broadcast releases of their latest mobile App or invite clients to request the latest PDF download. It integrates with other messaging services including Facebook Messenger and Amazon’s Alexa virtual assistant.

Robert Crutchington, Director of Encoded said: “At Encoded our solutions are designed to reduce contact centre costs by automating processes, offering new channels for fulfilment and transaction processing and increasing ways for agents to improve customer service.

“Enabling customers to pay securely using SMS ticks all of these boxes. Widely accepted as a non-intrusive, convenient method of communication, it is often preferred to emails or voice. It makes it easier for customers to pay and they don’t have to spend time waiting on the phone. It is also a cost effective way for businesses to take payments, saving agents time chasing late or non-payments.”

The new secure customer engagement platform is already in use at one of Encoded’s big brand customers and is available immediately.

Avaya has introduced a new version of the Avaya Workforce Optimisation suite, which improves service quality, operational and employee productivity and data privacy with a series of new features and tools.

The major software release should help customer engagement and comply with existing and emerging industry regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

IDC research commissioned by Avaya found that employee productivity is a key driver of digital transformation – a necessary step that sets the groundwork through which enterprises are better prepared to achieve the higher revenue growth associated with better customer experience.1 While optimising the customer experience and service delivery is critical to winning and keeping business, only 28 percent of companies believe they integrate customer communications with fulfilment and distribution extremely well.

Chris McGugan, Avaya SVP, Solutions and Technologies said that while more and more companies understand that providing a great customer experience is good business, many have a long way to go to bring all the parts together that make that a reality.

“Customer experience is a function of fully integrated, customer-facing, efficient and effective workforce support and back office processes. Avaya Workforce Optimisation helps ensure that the employees engaged in service delivery meet the standard of excellence that customers expect and deserve, and helps drive business profitability and growth.”

Avaya Workforce Optimisation also addresses a key concern of enterprises and customers around the world today: securing personal data and keeping it private. Driven by the European GDPR requirements, Avaya strengthened data privacy with the newest features to help securely record, process, archive, and protect customers’ data to reach compliance goals.

Other features included in the latest Avaya Workforce Optimisation release enable enterprises to:

· Improve operational effectiveness and accuracy with real-time speech analytics – Calls can be monitored in real-time to detect words and phrases of interest and to drive interactions to better outcomes.

· Improve customer and employee satisfaction – Supervisors and quality managers become better coaches and improve employee engagement through automated quality management, speeding scoring for some or all questions on evaluation forms.

Michael Lazarus, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Manager at HomeChoice said his outfit’s quality assurance staff can now quickly adjust to customer needs.

“If people struggle to access something on our website or think that a feature is not user-friendly, we hear about it immediately from calls, surveys, and quality assurance scores, and can start to implement the desired changes straightaway. Because we can provide better service, our customers are even more satisfied than before.”

Avaya has announced the global release of the new version of Avaya IP Office which is a UC platform.

The latest version adds support for Avaya Equinox and new capabilities that provide an enterprise-level experience with the ease of use and management that small and midsize businesses require.

Chris McGugan, SVP, Solutions and Technologies, Avaya. said that by providing a single app to access all the tools they need to efficiently communicate and collaborate “we’re truly enabling teams to work smarter, not harder”.

The company said the product was a huge market opportunity for Avaya and its partners.

“IP Office serves an enormous base – 26 million users and growing. The new release is the most scalable solution in the market today and the only one that offers contact centre-like features to any size of business, embedded in one solution package. Users now have the richness of enterprise UC solutions, all in a single application, on premise or in the cloud”, McGugan said.

Solution provider and Avaya partner Derek Gray, Carousel Cloud Solutions said that it’s important that it had a record of live conversations to ensure that it had a reference point of critical elements affecting a client’s satisfaction.

“Chronicall with IP Office logs everything that happens on the call, providing us with call history, recording and real-time reporting, with a clean, easy to use interface. This not only provides us with what we need, but is also a perfect fit for our customers.”

Partners using Avaya’s Powered by IP Office cloud platform also benefit from these new capabilities and can offer them to new or existing customers in either a full cloud or hybrid cloud deployment delivery model. Partners will also have new installation wizards and management tools to make it even easier and faster to deploy and manage both premises-based and cloud options. For example, the new Cloud Operations Manager simplifies administration of large multi-customer cloud deployments, upgrades, patching and application inventory with role-based administration that helps ensure security.

HPE has made improvements to its Nimble Storage range to offer all-flash and large performance gains.

It claims that the platform comes with a “Store More Guarantee” that will see the hardware store more data per raw terabyte of storage than any other vendor’s all-flash array. It added that the guarantee means that if the Nimble hardware is not able to meet the storage efficiency of an all-flash competitor, it will offer the extra storage for free.

The range takes advantage of storage class memory and NVMe to support “performance-intensive” applications like web analytics, business intelligence, real-time trading, and other applications that require instant results.

The new HPE Nimble Storage Adaptive Flash arrays merge hybrid and secondary flash technology into a single array and also support inline variable deduplication. It is aimed at mixed, primary workloads where cost-efficient flash performance is important. It also works as a secondary flash array for backup and disaster recovery while also allowing customers to run workloads such as quality assurance, test-dev and reporting, HPE said.

The vendor added that the arrays deliver all-flash like performance with up to 150% greater price-performance than previous arrays.

HPE’s storage GM Milan Shetti said: “We know from our customers that storage capacity efficiency is important to them, so we’re proud to be the first vendor to offer a guarantee. This guarantee further differentiates the HPE storage offering, which already includes HPE InfoSight, an industry-leading predictive analytics platform that prevents infrastructure problems before they happen, and is available for HPE Nimble and 3PAR storage customers.”

Oracle released three more autonomous cloud services which it is calling “self-driving” database and development platforms – which we assume cannot crash into any cyclists on a dark night.

The three new products are Oracle Autonomous Analytics Cloud; Oracle Autonomous Integration Cloud and Oracle Autonomous Visual Builder Cloud. The trio of products comes two months after Oracle unleashed its Autonomous Data Warehouse

The batch of autonomous services all uses machine learning to provide intelligent patching, upgrading, tuning, and resource scaling, which Oracle sees as a cunning plan to beat Amazon Web Services.

Amit Zavery, executive vice president for Oracle Cloud Platform, told the assembled throngs at a media launch that all three new services “give customers the ability to build applications as well as get analysis inside the data quickly and easily”.

The analytic cloud service provides customers with pre-built models they can use to drive deeper analysis of their data and better optimisations, Zavery said.

The integration cloud service recognises the proliferation of SaaS across the enterprise, and the challenges in connecting diverse platforms and solutions, Zavery said. That product uses machine learning to understand different elements inside an integration flow and quickly connect them. It comes with pre-packaged connectors to products from Salesforce, Workday and SAP, he said.

Oracle’s visual builder service is geared for would-be developers without much, if any, coding skills. The autonomous functionality will make the low-code platform even easier for them to rapidly create and extend desktop and mobile apps, Zavery said.

The company has said by the end of summer customers will see Express and NoSQL autonomous databases, along with a layer of other autonomous services pairing databases with analytics, data management and visualisation tools.